Anecdotes about Vegas, Low Stakes Poker, and the Characters Who Enjoy Both.

Friday, September 23, 2016

The Troglodyte Check

Some people are just obnoxious jerks,
and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Some of these obnoxious jerks play poker. And if there’s one at your table, it can be
really ruin the game.

This particular Saturday night, at
MGM, there was a real obnoxious jerk. A shithead. Young guy. I didn’t recognize him but it appeared that
most of the dealers knew him. How I had
managed to avoid running into this guy before, I dunno.

He was in seat 4, and I started out in
seat 6. I immediately asked for a seat
button change, because this was a club night and although I had one of the prime
tables for viewing, my back would be to the pedestrian traffic. Seat 1 or 9 were the best seats.

In seat 1 was a tall, really young kid
who was very aggro and also happened to resemble Phil Hellmuth. He looked like a younger Hellmuth, so in my
mind (and in my notes), I referred to him as Hellmuth, Jr. He straddled every time he was under-the-gun,
keep that in mind.

When I first arrived, the
aforementioned shithead was giving the poor fellow in Seat 9 a hard time. Seat 9 was a middle-aged guy with a foreign
(European?) accent. Apparently the
shithead thought seat 9 was a really bad player. He was making jokes about how he would call
with anything preflop, and how he’d never fold.
Sometimes he’d actually predict what kind of crappy hand he had. I’m assuming that before I got there, seat 9
had won some hands from the kid by playing crap and sucking out on him.

Seat 4 found a partner in teasing this
guy in Phil Hellmuth, Jr. Junior wasn’t
nearly as bad as shithead, but he was clearly enjoying his “jokes” at seat 9’s
expense. Whenever they would talk to
seat 9, he never said a word back, so most of the teasing was shithead talking
to Hellmuth, Jr. about how bad a player seat 9 was, certainly loud enough for
seat 9 to hear him if he was paying attention.

I have no idea if the criticism
bothered seat 9 or not. It’s possible he
didn’t understand some of what was being said.
But it was incredibly rude. And
it was also stupid. If shithead was
right and seat 9 was a bad player, why in the world would you want to say or do
anything that might encourage him to leave the table? Why not instead be nice to him, keep him in
the game, and win your money back when the law of averages eventually catches
up with him? I was disappointed that
none of the dealers said anything to the shithead about his comments, I
definitely think they should have. Maybe
the fact that he was laughing so much (as was Junior) made it seem like it was
all in good fun. Seat 9 was not laughing
but he didn’t appear annoyed. He
appeared oblivious.

Anyway, seat 9 finally cashed
out. Whether the comments from the rude
kids had anything to do with that, I have no idea. But that gave me the opportunity to take over
seat 9 to get the view I wanted, which I did.
Up to this point, I don’t think shithead had said anything to me, but he
couldn’t help expressing surprise that I would change seats to seat 9. “Why would you do that? Why move there? It makes no sense.”

I’m assuming he felt that way because that
meant my big blind would be straddled every time by Hellmuth, Jr. Or that Junior was in general an aggressive
player I’d probably prefer not having on my immediate left. I suppose he had a point. But by this time I’d figured out that Junior
wasn’t quite the poker player his “father” was.
I felt I had enough information on him to be able to deal with him,
straddles and all.

As it happens, my buddy Mike was
dealing at this time. He of course knew
full well why I wanted that seat. I
really didn’t think I owed shithead any explanation at all, but I said to him,
“I want to sit next to the dealer. I
want to talk to him.”

Unfortunately as it turned out, Mike
decided to out me and give the real reason.
“He wants the view.” Now shithead
had already been nudged once or twice to pay attention to his hand when hot
girls had walked by. But that didn’t
stop him from saying, “Oh the view. Really sir?” I ignored him. And then he
said something really bizarre. It was
something like, “Oh, you wanna be like Michael Jackson? Looking at kiddie porn? These girls are underage and you want to look
at them?”

What the hell?

Apparently, he’s young enough and
ignorant enough to think there is a time in a man’s life when he no longer is
interested in looking at attractive young women. I guess he figured I was so old, I’d be past
that. As I just mentioned, he himself
had demonstrated a roving eye for a few provocatively dressed ladies. I’m not sure what was more insulting. That I was old or that I was some kind of
pervert.

Listen, Skippy….men never outgrow
their fascination with the female form.
It develops in the early teens and lasts at least until death. Maybe longer.

I’m reminded of a story I heard from a
radio talk show host years ago. A female
doctor called to tell him about a recent experience in the hospital. She was checking on a very old, very sick
man. The guy was quite literally on his
death bed. And as she was checking his
vitals, she noticed he was looking down her shirt. And she was offended by that!

The host told her that it was a great
story and that he was glad that perhaps the very last sight the old man saw
before he moved on to the next life was something he really, really liked.

Aside:
Since when does a female doctor see patients wearing a top that you can
look down? But I digress.

I said nothing to the shithead. I didn’t even bother to point out that the
girls passing by would not be under-aged or they wouldn’t be allowed in a
casino (yes, I know some might be using fake ID’s). I just kind of seethed silently. I was waiting for Mike to say something to
him about that being an inappropriate thing to say to another player, but he
just laughed. Gee, thanks, Mike.

I didn’t make an issue of it. I just tried my best to ignore it and
concentrate on the game.

After Junior busted out, a couple of brothers
from Costa Rica came to the table. Between hands they would speak in Spanish to
each other. Shithead decided they were pretending to be inexperienced players
but were really good.They seemed like
pretty average players to me.But a
couple of times, shithead said to one of them, “Oh you’re acting like you don’t
know what you’re doing but that’s not the way you folded your cards.” The
brothers ignored him.They may not have
understood what he was saying.I didn’t
have any idea what he was talking about but it just may have been that he
realized he hadn’t done anything dickish in awhile so he had to come up with
something.

The poker session was rather blah for
me, so I’ll only talk about one hand, one where I was up against the star of
this post. I limped/called $12 with
Ace-9 of diamonds. It was three-way, including shithead, who was one of the
blinds. The flop was Ace-high, one
diamond. It checked around. The turn was
a blank and this time shithead bet $25, I called and the preflop raiser
folded. The river was a blank, he checked,
I showed my hand, he showed Ace-3.

So I won the hand, and shithead said, “Why
did you check?” I didn’t say anything. “I
had Ace-3!” Yes, I saw that. But only after the hand was over. I didn’t know he had Ace-3 when I checked did
I? Nine is a pretty weak kicker, I had
no idea his was worse. He continued to
express his disbelief that I checked and at one point said, “That was a troglodyte
check.”

Again, I said nothing. But by this time he had won the title of “shittiest
human being I encountered on this trip” in a walk. By the way, he never had a drop of alcohol
the entire time I was at the table with him, so he didn’t have that excuse.

He eventually busted out, but damn my
luck, it happened when I was in the restroom, denying me the pleasure of seeing
him lose all of his chips.

Well, I believe there is too much an age difference there guys. Hmm....you don't suppose that Lightning's VMHF could be the MOTHER of my shithead? If she was his mom, you'd almost have to excuse his behavior.

OTOH.....that would imply that a man actually impregnated VMHF, and that is really hard to imagine.

Rob I had the same guy at my table last week. Young Smart ASS just had a motor mouth. It seems some people want to talk and talk. They want other people to have to put up with them and what ever they have to say. Unfortunately the rest of us just came to play poker. It was a good game and I was winning so I just had to take it. If you give them any recognition they want to get further out of line. Sometimes I just go home. Its hard to ask for a table change when there is only one table in action.

I have logged a few hours in Vegas, LA, San Deigo, Baltimore, etc. However, I haven't noticed anyone being a jerk yet. I am the one who is usually talking too much but lately I have been trying to control my table image. Maybe the jerk was just trying to put people on tilt. It seems weird the dealer wouldn't say something. I would quit tipping the dealer at that point.

Rob, LOL. Once again, your timing for this post is incredible, because I was about to email you to ask about contributing a piece on a player I had to sit next to last night at Pechanga. The guy wasn't a jerk or a sh!thead but he was annoying as all get out, wouldn't stop talking or commenting on action, and kept trying to flout the rules of their poker room. When I left he was arguing with the dealer and floor about losing his seat, *after* being away from the table for over two blinds and 15 minutes (in fairness, those minutes were great for me at least).

Anyway, at least now you're more ready for when we can finally play together at Hawaiian Gardens as it oftentimes unfortunately seems like jerk central, and apologies I STILL haven't shown you anything... I guess when it comes to promises I'm no better than TBC. ;-) Hope it still happens sooner rather than later.

I think the ESPN main event coverage episodes 3 and 4 had two really, really mouthy table talkers. One at a feature table. I won't give either turd the benefit of calling them by name. The shithead not at the feature table got a penalty of one round from the table because of after being directed to STFU or face a penalty he started making hand jestures to his one opponent. He was told to stop his BS sign language schtick and ignored that directive and did get a one round penalty. Besides yacking this loser resorts to his alternative sign language to taunt and try to manipulate his opponent. These two can both FOFF...

Oh wow....I almost didn't approve this comment. Lester. Not because there's anything wrong with it, it's just that you are totally stealing my thunder. Just between you and me, my very next post will discuss that hand from the WSOP where the guy got the one round penalty. Oh well, not that many people read the comments. Come back tonite around 6:30 PST to see my full reaction.

But I do want to make one distinction. The shithead in my oost here was mostly making comments after the fact to embarrass and humiliate other players, he was not using table talk to try to induce action as the guy at the WSOP was.